The downward spiral continues: Writing. Coffee. The perils of external combustion. Staying the course. Dogs and cats living together. Inspiration and creativity. Drugs, guns and fucking in the streets.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Chiseling Blocks Of Time

I'm going to appropriate a phrase to sum up this week and then task it to do my evil bidding just because I can.

Regarding time management: you can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want.

I need to give my schedule a rethink during work days.

I get up relatively early, with enough time to shower, meditate for fifteen minutes, make a small breakfast while brewing a pot of awesome coffee, eat said breakfast and then there's about a half hour space to catch up on news, maybe write something like this. Then I head off to the new job, work eight hours, go to the gym, eat supper and then hang out with friends.

It's a weirdly full schedule. I need more time to write in the morning. Do I chisel it out of my sleep? Do I send my friends packing a half hour earlier? Do I give up meditation? Do I just get better at multitasking? Work smarter, not harder? Maybe hang out with my friends while I'm sleeping.

Decisions.

The real answer is to pay attention to how I'm spending my time, get more focused so I'm wasting less time doing the things that I do. There's usually a surprisingly large amount of down time throughout the day, when I'm just grinding my gears wishing I was doing the next thing on the list instead. Not really a good way to live life, actually.

The original saying I appropriated for this blog entry: "you can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want," was originally about money. "You can afford anything you want, but you can't afford everything you want."

Not surprising that time and money are largely interchangeable. The only difference is that you can't get time back. Once it's gone, it's gone. But it's definitely something you have to budget, just like money. Even when you just live your life, without thinking about the things you do, without any sort of intentionality, you're still budgeting your time; you're just doing it haphazardly.

Eventually, you have to ask yourself something along the lines of "is it really worth it to spend this much time every day doing something I hate or sitting in front of the television when I could be doing something a little more fulfilling?" Can I do something I like a little less so I have more time to do some I wish I could do more of?

Some people don't. Don't be like those people.

And, by the way, it's a key concept of this book, which I highly recommend reading.